War
I am not going to go over the reasons why I disagreed with starting this fight, because it's an unnecessary issue at this point.
What I do believe is that we as a nation need to get behind some solution or bearable resolution to what continues to be a misdirection of money, American patriotism, human blood and the mental fortitude of those returning.
I wonder about their hearts', brains', and souls' ability to deal with War. I don't remember hearing any stories of the WWII vets returning with the mental health problems that have come from Vietnam and Iraq. But WWII was an accepted war. That fight was the good fight.
In Madison last weekend I saw a bunch of old WWII posters and postcards. Some of them had ladies talking about how they were contrbuting by making cooking grease into bombs and the quintessential Rosie the Riviter one but a few surprised me. One says you should ride-share becasue "when you ride alone you ride with Hitler!" Others say that you should conserve, recycle, and grow gardens, all to help the war effort. Conserve, recycle, grow food? What were they a bunch of war-mongering hippies?
And now that we find ourselves in War again, why do we not have the "lets all sacrifice to make this happen" push represented in those post cards? The deeply cynical part of me says that we were never really in this-to-win-this. Nearly all of the corporate interests involved benefit more from conflict than resolution.
But what is the solution? I don't know, but the current "surge" or the "strategic reallocation of forces" both seem futile if we want anything resemblimg a good outcome. Maybe a draft is needed. Maybe we need 300,000 troops in Iraq to make things work. Easy for me to say being beyond draft age and having no kids or siblings to send.
But hey, I'll try to grow a garden, I will recycle, I will conserve, and I might even support a real surge if I had any faith in any leaders...
Hell, send in Colin Powell. Let him redeem himself.
He sure couldn't do anything worse...
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7 Comments:
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Good post. Two things I noticed with it:
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World War II vets not having a hard time adapting when they got back. I heard about this quite a bit from my dad. It happened. That sort of thing was usually kept quiet though, either by friends or family. It also helped that the economy was on a very powerful upswing after the war so there wasn't rampant unemployment like there was with Vietnam.
For a bit of contrast, here's a little article about more recent efforts at reintegration: http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/38/10/20
For the sacrifice part, there were pretty massive shortages during that period. The only thing that seems similar now is our fuel supply, and really not so much even then as it's more of an inconvenience of higher prices than anything. I'm going to get a little abstract now and say that what we are really sacrificing is personal freedom for security. This isn't so much of an individual sacrifice as a societal one, though. If we had a wider, more dangerous conflict, I think we would see much more in terms of sacrifice and loss.
Mehmet, at 6/08/2007 11:55 AM
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Well said. There is much to feel conflicted about concerning this war. One of the many things that made my stomach turn is the fact that they kept expounding on the mass killinigs of the Kurds that was taking place under Sadam. Yes that's terrible...but it happened in the 80's, and we didn't do shit about it.
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I do feel we should intervene when dictators such as that begin their reign of murder and terror. Ideally "we" would be a global effort, prefferably spear headed by the UN.
The reality of this war is that WE aren't so much at war as our soldiers are at war. Everyone got drafted during WWII, it wasn't just the draft age that was seen in Vietnam. The average citizen now, has no clue that we're at war nor what it means to truly be a nation at war. Which is weak as hell. The average citizen has sacrificed nothing.
This war was an incredible fuck up. How could the wealthiest nation in the world with the strongest military the planet has EVER seen screw up something so straight forward...unless they didn't want to. yoshva, at 6/08/2007 6:36 PM
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Apparently, I have created my own personal war with spell check.
By Ian, at 6/08/2007 7:42 PM
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Josh's post reminded me of one of my favorite quotes:
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"How do you get young people to care about politics? Institute a draft."
I love John Stewart. Mehmet, at 6/11/2007 2:54 PM
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Ask and the BBC
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delivers Ian, at 6/11/2007 7:31 PM
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P.S.
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Mehmet:
It's very true.
More and more I believe in mandatory service as in many other countries as long as Nation Guard, Coast Guard, and non-violent options are available. Today's youth (and yesterday's for that matter) need discipline. I did.
I guess that one problem is that this will create a new form of criminal - a title that can be tacked on to people to limit their ability to participate in the world. Who can regulate it? Who will take care of kids if parents are gone? Will women be required to serve? Will people have kids in order to not serve? There are answers to all of these questions, but are they all worth it? My jury of one is still hung...
heh... Ian, at 6/11/2007 7:40 PM
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In my perfect scenario, all the money that would be saved on defense spending would go towards social programing. Better education, better community programs. Travel stipends for the young? So yes, we would be training folk in the military process, but we would also be teaching them alternative approaches to this existance...just a thought.
By yoshva, at 6/11/2007 9:07 PM
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